1) Climate Astrology: Climate Scientists Now Predict Wet Future For CaliforniaUPI, 6 July 2017Brooks HaysClimate scientists now expect California to experience more rain in the coming decades, contrary to the predictions of previous climate models.Normalized precipitation over Western North America (five-year mean) from 22 climate models used to formulate the 2013 IPCC report, as summarized by Schwalm et al., 2012, Reduction in carbon uptake during turn of the century drought in western North America.Most scientists agree that California, like most places, will get warmer through the end of the century. And until now, most agreed California would get drier. New research out of the University of California, Riverside, however, suggests otherwise.The new models predict the state will enjoy a 12 percent increase in precipitation totals through 2100.Both central and northern California will get wetter, according to the models, while Southern California will experience slightly less precipitation through the end of the century. Most of the increase in precipitation will be during the winter months.“Most previous research emphasized uncertainty with regards to future precipitation levels in California, but the overall thought was California would become drier with continued climate change,” Robert Allen, an associate professor at UC Riverside, said in a news release. “We found the opposite, which is quite surprising.”Weather variability makes it difficult to project how climate change will affect rain and snow totals. Predicting future precipitation totals in California is further complicated by the fact that the northern half of the state is expected to get wetter while the southern half is predicted to get drier.But predictive climate and weather models are growing more sophisticated, allowing scientists to quiet the noise of yearly variability and focus on longterm patterns.The new research — detailed in the journal Nature Communications — suggest increasing surface temperatures in the tropical eastern Pacific Ocean, lying to the 2,500 miles east, will encourage a local trade wind delivering a larger number of storm systems to the California coast.“Essentially, this mechanism is similar to what we in California expect during an El Nino year,” Allen said. “Ultimately, what I am arguing is El Nino-like years are going to become more the norm in California.”In other words, California’s future is likely to look more like the past two years, during which the state enjoyed record rainfall totals.Full story2) Red Teaming: Trump Administration Plans To Re-Assess Climate Science In Series Of ReviewsCBC News, 6 July 2017The Trump administration will soon begin a review that will question the veracity of the climate change science used by President Barack Obama’s administration as the basis for environmental regulations.

The move by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to launch public debates between scientists on climate research, known as red-team, blue-team exercises, would be the first major effort by the Republican administration to challenge the long-standing scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.Advocates who have petitioned the EPA to reverse the scientific finding underlying U.S. regulations governing greenhouse gas emissions see the proposal to scrutinize mainstream climate science as a first step in that direction.“It’s a way to survey the landscape before reopening the endangerment finding,” said Myron Ebell, head of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, one of the groups that filed a petition with the agency to undo the 2009 scientific determination that formed the basis for the Obama administration’s regulation of greenhouse gases.In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had authority under the federal Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases from cars if the agency determined they endangered human health.EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spoken several times about the merits of opening the climate change debate up to the public. The website Climatewire on Friday cited a senior administration official, who said Pruitt plans to launch the back-and-forth scientific critiques formally.Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt speaks during CERAWeek by IHS Markit on Thursday, March 9, 2017, in Houston. Pruitt said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” he does not believe that carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming, a statement at odds with mainstream scientific consensus and his own agency. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP)Francis Menton, a lawyer who filed an endangerment finding petition in January on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council, said Pruitt told an event at the Manhattan Institute think tank in New York on Friday that he would launch the debates in the next few months.Menton said he asked Pruitt whether he had made a decision on reopening the endangerment finding. Pruitt said the agency is weighing its options.Scientific consensusThe review “can create a body of scientific work that can be trustworthy and dependable to make regulatory choices and decisions,” said Rob Henneke, of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a third group that filed an endangerment finding petition.Unlike the other two, it has challenged the legality of the endangerment finding, not the science.Environmental groups are confident that Pruitt will not be successful if he tries to undo the endangerment finding because they expect the courts will side with the scientific consensus that human beings are exacerbating climate change.Full story3) Leading Climate Scientist Says Debating Scientific Theories Would Be ‘Un-American’The Federalist, 6 July 2017Julie KellyYou’d think the 97 percent of scientists who supposedly all agree about climate change would eagerly line up to vanquish climate deniers—but apparently not.Way, way back in April 2017, scientists around the world participated in the ‘March for Science’ as a show of force and unity against an allegedly anti-science Trump administration. Their motto was “science not silence”: many wrote that mantra on pieces of duct tape and stuck it across their mouths.March for Science organizers claimed that “the best way to ensure science will influence policy is to encourage people to appreciate and engage with science. That can only happen through education, communication, and ties of mutual respect between scientists and their communities — the paths of communication must go both ways.”But that was so three months ago.Many scientists are now rejecting an open debate on anthropogenic global warming. EPA administrator Scott Pruitt appears ready to move forward with a “red-team, blue-team” exercise, where two groups of scientists publicly challenge each other’s evidence on manmade climate change. The idea was floated during a Congressional hearing last spring and outlined in a Wall Street Journalop-ed by Steve Koonin, former undersecretary of energy in the Obama administration.Koonin said the public is unaware of the intense debate in climate science and how “consensus statements necessarily conceal judgment calls and debates and so feed the “settled,” “hoax” and “don’t know” memes that plague the political dialogue around climate change.”It would work this way: A red team of scientists critiques a key climate assessment. The blue team responds. The back-and-forth continues until all the evidence is aired and refuted, followed by public hearings and an action plan based on the findings. It happens entirely out in the open. Koonin said this approach is used in high-consequence situations and “very different and more rigorous than traditional peer review, which is usually confidential and always adjudicated, rather than public and moderated.” (Climate scientist Judith Curry has a good primer on this concept here.)Pruitt is prepared to pull the trigger on this idea, according to an article in E&E News last week. In an interview with Breitbart News on June 5, Pruitt touted the red-team, blue-team initiative, saying that “the American people need to have that type of honest open discussion, and it’s something we hope to provide as part of our leadership.”Instead Of Dialoguing, Climate Scientists PreachNow you would think the scientific establishment would embrace an opportunity to present their case to a wary, if disinterested, public. You would think the 97 percent of scientists who supposedly all agree human activity is causing climate change would eagerly line up to vanquish climate deniers, especially those in the Trump administration. You would think the same folks who fear a science-averse President Trump would be relieved his administration is encouraging a rigorous, forensic inquiry into the most consequential scientific issue of our time that has wide-ranging economic, social, and political ramifications around the world.You would think.But instead, many scientists and activists are expressing outrage at this logical suggestion, even advising colleagues not to participate. In a June 21 Washington Postop-ed, three top climate scientists repudiated the red-team concept, offended by the slightest suggestion that climate science needs fixing. Naomi Oreskes, Benjamin Salter, and Kerry Emanuel wrote that “calls for special teams of investigators are not about honest scientific debate. They are dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions, and to undercut the legitimacy, objectivity and transparency of existing climate science.”In a July 1 post full of irony, leading climate scientist Ken Caldeira blasts the climate contest: “We don’t want red team/blue team because science doesn’t line up monolithically for or against scientific positions.” What? Never mind the 97 percent consensus claim that’s been shoved down our throats for the past decade. (Caldeira also wrote just a few months ago that “the evidence for human-induced global warming is now so strong that no sensible person can deny a human role in these temperature increases. We can argue about what we should or should not do … but the argument is over.”)Caldeira then smugly questions why “politicians who have never engaged in any scientific inquiry in their lives believe themselves to be the experts who should tell scientists how to conduct their business?” (Shall we then ask why scientists who have never engaged in any legislative or political endeavor in their lives believe themselves to be the experts who should tell lawmakers how to conduct their business?)Full post4) Venus And Stephen Hawking’s Scientific IlliteracyThe Reference Frame, 8 July 2017Luboš MotlJust a few decades ago, a scientist who would say something like Stephen Hawking would mock himself so much that he would completely lose all credibility and become a joke everyone laughs at. But these days, saying nonsense like that is apparently normal.

Five days ago, Stephen Hawking – or someone who has hacked his computerized speech generator – has told us that Donald Trump is a supervillain who will transform the Earth to another Venus with temperatures at 250 °C and sulfuric acid rains.Wow. Now, every intelligent 10-year-old kid must know why this possibility is non-existent, why the statement is nonsense. Some scientists including Roy Spencer have pointed out how absurd these Hawking’s statements were from a scientific viewpoint.But lots of the scientists who have paid lip service to the lies about the so-called global warming or climate change in the past have remained silent and confirmed that their scientific dishonesty has no limits. I despise all the climate alarmists who know that statements like that are absurd but who hide this fact because a lie like that could be helpful for their profits or political causes. You know, what these jerks and the people who tolerate these jerks’ existence haven’t quite appreciated is that it is only lies that may be helpful for them.Now, there are exceptions. Zeke Hausfather, a US Berkeley climatologist, has been an alarmist but he has pointed out that he realizes that Hawking’s statement is just junk:However, I disagree with Hausfather’s assertion that this statement by Hawking’s is outside Hawking’s field of expertise. It is some rather basic physics combined with the basic knowledge of the outer space that should be known to 10-year-old boys who attend physics lectures at the elementary school. It isn’t or shouldn’t be outside Stephen Hawking’s expertise because Hawking is a physicist and one who has studied the outer space. I think it’s right to say that Stephen Hawking has shown a rudimentary ignorance about his field, physics.A reader has asked me “why Venus is special”. But Venus isn’t special in any general sense. Or if we said that Venus is special, almost every planet would be special. A more sensible assertion is that every planet is completely different. It has a completely different chemistry than others. It has a completely different temperature than others, mostly due to the completely different distance from the Sun.I really think that it’s a shame that kids and even adults don’t reliably know these basic things. […]But the connection between Venus and Donald Trump is yet another level of Hawking’s stunning stupidity. Donald Trump may be the U.S. president but he’s not a dictator controlling life on Earth, not even life in the U.S. The Americans are increasing or decreasing their consumption of fossil fuels in various ways – some people grow the economy, others are unhinged green lunatics, and so on – in ways that don’t depend on the identity of a guy in the White House much.What one U.S. president may do is to change the U.S. emissions by 5% in one direction or another during his 8-year tenure. But the U.S. is just about 1/5 of the world so this would amount to the change of the world emissions by 1% during these 8 years. During these 8 years, 4 ppm per year times 8 = 32 ppm is being emitted by the mankind to the atmosphere. 1% of that, as I just explained, which Trump may affect is just 0.32 ppm. The greenhouse effect from 120 ppm that we’ve added since the industrial revolution could have been 0.7 °C of warming. But 0.32 ppm is 375 times less than 120 ppm so you expect 375 times less warming than 0.7 °C from that, about 0.002 °C.A U.S. president like Donald Trump has the capacity to change the temperature of the Earth by 0.002 °C in one way or another, not by hundreds of degrees that would be needed to make Earth more similar to Venus. Can you see the difference between 0.002 °C and 200 °C? It is the same five damn orders of magnitude that I have mentioned as the ratio of CO2 in the atmospheres. Is Stephen Hawking or the hacker of his computer unable to distinguish the numbers 200 and 0.002?Full postsee also: BBC News 2001: Scientists criticise Hawking ‘hype’5) 40% Of Americans Have Been Misled By Climate AlarmistsThe Independent, 7 July 2017 For about two-fifths of the American population, climate change is likely going to kill off the entire human population.

That’s according to a new poll from Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communication, which also found that a healthy majority of Americans believe people are the cause of global warm.The study found that 39 per cent of Americans think that the chance that climate change leads to the extinction of the human race is higher than 50 percent. Most Americans, though, believe that the chances of that scenario are less than 50 percent.Full story6) And Finally: Secret G20 Draft Declaration Revealed :-)The Australian, 10 July 2017The Australian this morning exclusively reveals an early draft of the leaders’ declaration from the weekend’s G20 summit:“We, the leaders of the G20 (and thousands of hangers-on), met in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7-8, at cost to taxpayers of hundreds of millions of euros.“We remain amazed and grateful that the world’s media continues to cover this luxurious circus, unrivalled in production of inanities, year after year. We, as the world’s premier body for economic discussion, are proud of our record in lifting waffle to levels of sophistication unimaginable in an earlier era.“The media and the political class can achieve more together than by acting alone.“We once again met at a time of profound change amid sustained continuity. We are determined to calibrate and co-ordinate our policy frameworks to foster economic growth that is confident, strong and nice. Growth has been too wonky and lopsided, with an insufficient level of sharing.

“We undertake to consult often, widely and effectively, via landline and mobile telephone, Facebook messenger, WeChat (in China), including through use of GIFs where appropriate.“We have come together as one to make totally unverifiable undertakings in support of three appealing nouns that we agreed at last year’s Hangzhou summit in China: resilience, sustainability, and fun. In the interests of avoiding international awkwardness we have resolved never to raise, discuss or even allude to the rationale for, or outcome of, the British general election earlier this year in front of the British Prime Minister Theresa May.“We acknowledge that Ivanka is amazing. She is so amazing. She is absolutely terrific. We also fully support the aspirations of women and girls and applaud in particular Saudi Arabia’s undertaking to make women’s issues the centrepiece of its summit in 2020.“We condemn actions by North Korea that risk impairing global harmony. Sad!“We have secured the services of distinguished diplomat Hans Blix, who will spearhead a cross-country delegation charged with conveying our sentiments to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. We indicate in the strongest terms our determination to defend western, eastern, southern and northern values.“We extend an invitation to South Australia’s Premier Jay Weatherill, and his 17 media advisers, to update the G20 on the success of his government’s bold climate saving initiatives at the 2018 summit in Buenos Aires, where, inspired by practice at APEC, we will dress up as lithium batteries for an official photograph to signal our support.“We acknowledge differences of opinion among members on the efficacy of the Paris Agreement on climate change, and now strenuously undertake to limit global temperature increase to no more than 2.16 degrees Celsius by 2104…“As part of our new Partnership with Africa we urge Africa to consider new ways to be less poor as part of our global efforts to reduce terrorism and the flow of refugees into G20 countries.“We also welcome establishment of the Kleptomania Mitigation Taskforce, which will examine innovative ways to curb inappropriate use of foreign aid, to be spearheaded by Rwanda and Congo as part of the African Union’s Agenda 2063.Full document

The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website atwww.thegwpf.com.

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